Forget the room of one’s own - write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus or on the welfare line, on the job or during meals, between sleeping and waking. I write while sitting on the john. No long stretches at the typewriter unless you’re wealthy or have a patron - you may not even own a typewriter. While you wash the floor or clothes listen to the words chanting in your body. When you’re depressed, angry, hurt, when compassion and love possess you. When you cannot help but write.

To nurture Latina and Latino leaders in the next generation, we must ensure that our young people, and all young people, are taught not only by their families but also by their schools, communities and the media to know their heritage, to be proud of what they are, to be inspired by their cultural past.

We need to become much more aware of the homogenizing power of mass media, which effectively and cleverly convinces us to seek happiness by looking like a smiling, uniform model. Often the popular model has little to do with us. In our loud and brash society, our distinctiveness is steadily diminished through quiet losses: our children don’t speak Spanish or kiss their elders on the cheek or listen to patiently to Abuelita’s oft-repeated stories or question inequities. Like those perfect strawberries or uniform roses, Latinos will meet other’s definitions of quality by settling for being mannequins, by losing the deep red flavor of our myths, music, values, Spanish- nuestra sangre.

I am a person born not only of translations, but of transitions- my very existence marks that conjunction between one culture and another. By claiming this borderland as my own, by acknowledging that I am neither one nor the other, but both, I have been able to reach out and find the parts of each culture that pertain to me. I will never really understand Mexican politics, or be able to tell a joke in English; but I appreciate the beauty and magic inherent in both languages.

This has been my experience with Mexico, both a fairy tale and a stern taskmaster that, while gracious, has no patience for the romanticism or idealism it is so easy to bring to such a beautiful country.

No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country…we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all. The United States came to us.

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Picture 044 (by Memo Pisa el Lodo)